5 ms·

USM holds pilot in which students use free 'open-source' textbooks

43 points by kapkapkap 13y ago

murphysbooks 13y ago
I had an off campus college bookstore for over ten years. The paragraph... The textbook publishing industry is "not opposed" to open-source textbooks and is even partnering with some providers, said David Anderson, executive director of higher education at the Association of American Publishers. But he said traditional textbooks can cost up to a few million dollars to produce, and he is skeptical that such an effort can be re-created on a large scale for a product distributed for free. made me laugh because it sounds like the argument Encyclopedia Britannica used against Wikipedia. I am sure there will be attempts to legislate this "problem" to the publishing industries liking.
ericcumbee 13y ago
>Educators at all levels are still figuring out how to best use technology in the classroom. For example, Baltimore County Superintendent Dallas Dance announced recently that the district would aim to place a tablet or laptop in the hand of every student within five years. I'm not entirely sold on the idea that every student having a tablet or laptop is the most effective use of education money. I tend to lean more towards having classroom sets of laptops or tablets and a active learning/ combined media class room setup.
- chrisBob 13y ago
  Typed reports, and presentations instead of written reports are becoming common, and I consider that progress. If you require typed homework, but don't provide a computer to take home then you are discriminating against poor families. My family has had a computer at home for over 25 years, but that is not the case for everyone.
seanmcdirmid 13y ago
The title doesn't match the article, and is incredibly bad. I thought by reading it that USM decided to incarcerate a student pilot for using a free open-source textbook.
- yarrel 13y ago
  "in" precludes that reading.
  - seanmcdirmid 13y ago
    "USM holds pilot in student's illegal use of free 'open-source' textbooks" is completely reasonable in English. The current title is not far from that.
softgrow 13y ago
The article appears to be lifted from a student newspaper article from May 2013 http://www.diamondbackonline.com/news/campus/article_3d410960-b9b6-11e2-bde6-0019bb30f31a.html http://www.diamondbackonline.com/news/campus/article_3d41096... A book by the same name by Charles Stangor, University of Maryland and used for PSCY 100 classes there, so more than likely the book discussed in the article, is also available free at https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/BookDetail.aspx?bookId=48 https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/BookDetail.aspx?bookId=48 but paid and you can also get v2.0! at https://students.flatworldknowledge.com/course/1315333 https://students.flatworldknowledge.com/course/1315333
lifeisstillgood 13y ago
Going to pitch Connexions.org / CNX.org - open source textbooks by open source editor - great folks, great mission, all on GitHub
chrisBob 13y ago
One thing that is missing here is a discussion of how a lot of good professors have a strong incentive not to use open source books: Many of them wrote the ones they are using for their course. If a professor wrote a good course text then they have a strong financial incentive to make the current edition mandatory for the class. Dealing with this will require some tense negotiations and possibly mean that the school will have to either buy out the books, or adjust contracts to include the copyright to faculty authored content.
- lifeisstillgood 13y ago
  I have to say this is a little unfair to many many professors. Very few if any make enough from margin sales that converting to open source will hurt them meaningfully. this is not to say there is not career advantage in writing "the standard book on", but stuffing a few hundred students each year is hardly the lottery win.
noahl 13y ago
To me, the most interesting part is how clearly the textbook industry and the reporter don't "get" the open source development process. For instance: But [David Anderson, executive director of higher education at the Association of American Publishers] said traditional textbooks can cost up to a few million dollars to produce, and he is skeptical that such an effort can be re-created on a large scale for a product distributed for free. Of course, there are multiple open-source software projects that would take hundreds of millions of dollars worth of development effort to do again. To me, the number he's quoting seems like so little effort that it's almost absurd to think you couldn't do it. But if you're not in the software development industry, I guess these things aren't obvious. And the related issue is the use of "open source" to describe a process that does not seem to allow contributions from the public, which is of course how those software projects became so big in the first place: Roberts estimated that he spent 80 hours pulling together open-source materials for his textbook, working late into the night to write some sections himself when he could not find good material. I'm not entirely sure, but I think the paper (and the professor) think that "open source" development means putting together class materials that are freely available online. The trouble is that the economic advantage of open source software development is essentially that it is cheaper for someone else, not the original author of the project, to fix a few bugs in an existing open source project rather than starting from scratch. That is why people fix those bugs, and why open source projects grow. If you're not allowing (or really, actively soliciting) those contributions, you can't take advantage of this effect. In summary: using open source textbook materials is a great idea, but it would be better if they learned from how the software industry does it.
- lifeisstillgood 13y ago
  I worked for CNX.org for 18 mths and every single thing we did is on GitHub/Connexions. A major rewrite of a ten year old also open source project, by collaborators on two continents aimed at making the editors, processing chains and publishing for textbooks across the US. they get it. The excellent annual conference is on now (ish) and will have everyone from small town professors to udacity and the stonkingly-gets-it Charles S Burrus who is actually running a coursera EE course where they send thousands of multimeters, PCbs and tools out to students so they can do the actual EE parts. trust me the folks involved get it. I wish I had written up those blog posts now so I could link you

43 points by kapkapkap 13y ago

I had an off campus college bookstore for over ten years. The paragraph... The textbook publishing industry is "not opposed" to open-source textbooks and is even partnering with some providers, said David Anderson, executive director of higher education at the Association of American Publishers. But he said traditional textbooks can cost up to a few million dollars to produce, and he is skeptical that such an effort can be re-created on a large scale for a product distributed for free. made me laugh because it sounds like the argument Encyclopedia Britannica used against Wikipedia. I am sure there will be attempts to legislate this "problem" to the publishing industries liking.

ericcumbee 13y ago

>Educators at all levels are still figuring out how to best use technology in the classroom. For example, Baltimore County Superintendent Dallas Dance announced recently that the district would aim to place a tablet or laptop in the hand of every student within five years. I'm not entirely sold on the idea that every student having a tablet or laptop is the most effective use of education money. I tend to lean more towards having classroom sets of laptops or tablets and a active learning/ combined media class room setup.

chrisBob 13y ago
Typed reports, and presentations instead of written reports are becoming common, and I consider that progress. If you require typed homework, but don't provide a computer to take home then you are discriminating against poor families. My family has had a computer at home for over 25 years, but that is not the case for everyone.

seanmcdirmid 13y ago

The title doesn't match the article, and is incredibly bad. I thought by reading it that USM decided to incarcerate a student pilot for using a free open-source textbook.

yarrel 13y ago
"in" precludes that reading.
- seanmcdirmid 13y ago
  "USM holds pilot in student's illegal use of free 'open-source' textbooks" is completely reasonable in English. The current title is not far from that.

softgrow 13y ago

The article appears to be lifted from a student newspaper article from May 2013 http://www.diamondbackonline.com/news/campus/article_3d410960-b9b6-11e2-bde6-0019bb30f31a.html http://www.diamondbackonline.com/news/campus/article_3d41096... A book by the same name by Charles Stangor, University of Maryland and used for PSCY 100 classes there, so more than likely the book discussed in the article, is also available free at https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/BookDetail.aspx?bookId=48 https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/BookDetail.aspx?bookId=48 but paid and you can also get v2.0! at https://students.flatworldknowledge.com/course/1315333 https://students.flatworldknowledge.com/course/1315333

lifeisstillgood 13y ago

Going to pitch Connexions.org / CNX.org - open source textbooks by open source editor - great folks, great mission, all on GitHub

chrisBob 13y ago

One thing that is missing here is a discussion of how a lot of good professors have a strong incentive not to use open source books: Many of them wrote the ones they are using for their course. If a professor wrote a good course text then they have a strong financial incentive to make the current edition mandatory for the class. Dealing with this will require some tense negotiations and possibly mean that the school will have to either buy out the books, or adjust contracts to include the copyright to faculty authored content.

lifeisstillgood 13y ago
I have to say this is a little unfair to many many professors. Very few if any make enough from margin sales that converting to open source will hurt them meaningfully. this is not to say there is not career advantage in writing "the standard book on", but stuffing a few hundred students each year is hardly the lottery win.

noahl 13y ago

To me, the most interesting part is how clearly the textbook industry and the reporter don't "get" the open source development process. For instance: But [David Anderson, executive director of higher education at the Association of American Publishers] said traditional textbooks can cost up to a few million dollars to produce, and he is skeptical that such an effort can be re-created on a large scale for a product distributed for free. Of course, there are multiple open-source software projects that would take hundreds of millions of dollars worth of development effort to do again. To me, the number he's quoting seems like so little effort that it's almost absurd to think you couldn't do it. But if you're not in the software development industry, I guess these things aren't obvious. And the related issue is the use of "open source" to describe a process that does not seem to allow contributions from the public, which is of course how those software projects became so big in the first place: Roberts estimated that he spent 80 hours pulling together open-source materials for his textbook, working late into the night to write some sections himself when he could not find good material. I'm not entirely sure, but I think the paper (and the professor) think that "open source" development means putting together class materials that are freely available online. The trouble is that the economic advantage of open source software development is essentially that it is cheaper for someone else, not the original author of the project, to fix a few bugs in an existing open source project rather than starting from scratch. That is why people fix those bugs, and why open source projects grow. If you're not allowing (or really, actively soliciting) those contributions, you can't take advantage of this effect. In summary: using open source textbook materials is a great idea, but it would be better if they learned from how the software industry does it.

lifeisstillgood 13y ago
I worked for CNX.org for 18 mths and every single thing we did is on GitHub/Connexions. A major rewrite of a ten year old also open source project, by collaborators on two continents aimed at making the editors, processing chains and publishing for textbooks across the US. they get it. The excellent annual conference is on now (ish) and will have everyone from small town professors to udacity and the stonkingly-gets-it Charles S Burrus who is actually running a coursera EE course where they send thousands of multimeters, PCbs and tools out to students so they can do the actual EE parts. trust me the folks involved get it. I wish I had written up those blog posts now so I could link you